Anyway, I sought out some feedback on the brew and was not disappointed with the response.  Fellow brewers are gentle, but constructively critical.  Here are some of the highlights of the feedback:

Pros – It was generally seen as a smooth beer, especially compared to some of the commercial stouts we tasted that night.  Most found it to have good mouth feel without an overpowering alcohol burn.  One club member noted the chocolate notes that were subtle, but present.  The overall view was that it was a surprisingly good drinking stout considering the 7%abv.

Cons – Lacks the “wham-bang” of some more complex and rich stouts.  It’s a good beer, but not a great beer.  It’s a little high for style (abv), but with stouts there is a pretty wide accepted range.

So over all I was really happy with the response.  I was going for a palatable stout that I was be comfortable drinking 10 gallons of.  The feedback was in line with what I was looking for, both the positive and the negative.

After the meeting, I decided to have a glass to collect some of my thoughts.  After trying three different stouts and a handful of other brews, I found that Wilford’s Best did lack some complexity.  While is was drinkable and had nice mouth feel, it really fell short on the flavors.  It could use some hints of toffee, chocolate and coffee to really set it off.  Instead, you get a great swath of delicious aroma and the flavor falls short.

*Notes for next time, split up the roasted barley with some 120L crystal and a small amount of chocolate malt.  I think that this will give some more complexity, but it needs to be done in moderation as this could make the beer really over powering.

Anyway, this weekend I started at about 1pm after one of my football games.  This was a 10 gallon brew of oatmeal stout that would make Wilford Brimley proud.  This was another in the line of my “simple brews” where I’ve tried to scale down the complexity of my recipe’s with hope of letting the style shine through and decide what beers I really like.

Now with this beer, I started out with a 21bix first running (1.088), 16 brix (1.066) after the first sparge and 11 brix (1.045) in the last running.  The pre-boil gravity was 1.063 and after a 1 hr boil, the OG was 1.071, compared to the estimated 1.064.  I added two table spoons of gypsum to the mash with hopes of getting the water treated to be a little more like that water in Dublin.

At the end of the day, the wort looked and smelled great.  I have high hopes for this brew.  Lets see how everything turns out in the end.  On another note, I have to say that I really enjoy the day brewing over the morning brewing we usually do.  I got to drink a few beers and had some neighbors stop by.

It was great to have Jess out there to participate in a brew day and if anyone wants to stop by, feel free to email me at travis@cnybrew.com or hit me up on twitter @cnybrew.

Cheers

Best picture I found about oatmeal

That’s right, beer isn’t just for dinner and lunch anymore, now it’s for breakfast.  My friends over at the Brew Dudes have also been in on the Oatmeal Stout and I haven’t brewed one since I used to kit brew.  I think it’s time to re-visit this classing breakfast drink.

Seriously though, I am going to be continuing on my path of less is more in my brewing.  This is a simple stout with some flaked oats to hopefully give the beer some body.  I am currently at 3lbs of flaked oats, but I might be splitting that half flaked oats and half flaked barley.

Here is what I have so far:

 Amount Item Type
26.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 
3.00 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain
3.00 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) 60 min
1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] (60 min) Hops 30 min
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min) Hops 10 min
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (10 min)
Irish Ale Yeast (1085)

This is going to be a single mash infusion held at 154 for 60 min with two batch sparges.  In case it wasn’t obvious by the recipe, this is a 10 gallon batch.  I want to treat the water with some calcium, but we’ll see how the brew day goes.

Cheers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kynKT_fUVk]

I was impressed with the brew. I am not sure I would be able to handle 5 gallons of it (good thing he only made a 1 gallon batch), but it was tasty nonetheless. Ted really hits the mark on his brews (unlike MNB), but if I had to make a suggestion, it would be to tone down the carbonation just a little.

Cheers

This past weekend we brewed up three batches of brew. We also broke a new brewer into the hobby when by wife’s cousin Bryan (Yes MNB, spelled like Bryan Adams, no need to get all giddy) joined us and brewed up an extract batch. When the day was all said and done, we had brewed up about 20 gallons of beer.

Nick and I brewed a 10.5 gallon of Belgian wit I named Ongenaet Wheat – after Belgian SU Basketball player Kristof Ongenaet. If you haven’t seen the guy play, he’s a warrior, total scrapper. Against Marquette he stole the ball and did a 1 on 4 coast to coast where he dunked and drew the foul. I couldn’t find that highlight, but here is Arinze Onuaku breaking a backboard at the midnight madness game.

Ongenaet Wheat
Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.12 gal
Estimated OG: 1.049 SG
Estimated Color: 5.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 16.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 59.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
————

12.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Euro (3.0 SRM) Grain 51.72 %
8.25 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 35.56 %
1.75 lb Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 7.54 %
1.20 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.17 %
1.00 oz Brewer’s Gold [8.00 %] (60 min) Hops 14.0 IBU
0.50 oz Liberty [4.30 %] (25 min) Hops 2.6 IBU
1 Pkgs Belgian Strong Ale (Wyeast Labs #13Yeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 23.20 lb
—————————-
Single Infusion, Light Body

75 min Mash In Add 7.25 gal of water at 161.4 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 4.64 gal of water at 200.2 F 168.0 F

‘Cuse may have been snubbed from the big dance, but this beer is going to help wash away the pain. We also used 2oz of sour orange peel, 1tsp of crushed coriander, and 2oz of grains of paradise. It weighed in at 1.044 making this a summer sensation.

The second recipe we brewed was a 5 gallon alt that we used the kolsch yeast in both for the cream ale and the kolsch. The recipe was based on the specs from Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers:

Alt-ternative Lifestyles
Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.047 SG
Estimated Color: 13.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 37.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
————

6.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 59.63 %
2.00 lb Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 18.35 %
1.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 10L (10.0 SRGrain 11.47 %
1.00 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 9.17 %
0.15 lb Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 1.38 %
1.25 oz Brewer’s Gold [8.00 %] (60 min) Hops 37.4 IBU
1 Pkgs Kolsch Yeast (Wyeast Labs #2565) [SYeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 10.90 lb
—————————-
Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge

60 min Mash In Add 3.41 gal of water at 159.1 F 148.0 F

This beer came in a little light for the specs, but I would say that a lot of that had to do with the new mash tun clogging. The OG should have been 1.047 and it wound up 1.041. I have since fixed the issue with the false bottom and moved back to the braid – old faithful – it always works!

Finally we brewed up Bryan’s Guinness Stout Clone. I came up with the recipe based on Googling some clone recipes and trying to find out what worked. It turns out people on the Internet are morons (present company excluded). The recipe is way light and a little under hopped. Not a HUGE deal, just a little pissed that people (multiple) post up recipes that are so far off. Anyway, lesson learned and I am sticking with good ole Beer Smith from here on in:

6.6lbs Muttons light LME
1lb Flaked Barkey
.5lb Roasted Barley
.25lb Black Patent
1oz Northern Brewer (60min)
1oz Fuggles (3min)

Steeped grains for 1/2hr at 158f, added 1tsp of gypsum. We dumped in the extract, brought it to a boil and topped it off with water once it was cooled off to give him the proper quantity. The OG was about 1.049 with 33 IBU’s.

Going forward, I would replace the light LME with dark, increase the BP from .25 to .5, and the roasted barley to .75. Right now he is light for the color (about 26SRM) and could use some more hopps. With that said, it should still be a good beer for his first time out.

Bryan came over Sunday morning prepared with venison sausage, baked beans and a cast iron pan (seen cooking in the picture) so we got to eat some breakfast and brew some beer. Not much else to say besides that…

Cheers!

To help deal with this, I added some water, about 2qts or so, and let it hang out in secondary for a while.

I had another taste since doing this and I have to say it made a big difference. The oak flavor is still there and pretty strong, but nothing like it was before. I am going to let them mellow out in the bottle for a while. As you can see from the pictures, the watering down did not impact the SRM in anyway.

With this bottling I tried a trick Nick was telling me about for long-term storage. You wrap the threads of the growler with Teflon tape and then screw your top on. With these I am going to be bottle conditioning so I have to be sure not to over tighten the caps because the plastic caps (with the plastic diaphragm in them) will break if you try to over tighten them too much. With the Teflon tape it allows you to tighten them snug, without feeling like you have left them loose.

This weekend we are brewing an IPA and a flavored porter. For the flavors we are looking at anise to do something like the pugnacious porter I did a while back, or perhaps some maple sugar to try something different. Any input would be appreciated!

Cheers

Okay, so this is not going to be a very good post for me explaining all of the ins and outs of our brew day. Instead, this is going to be more of a summary of the vitals and a quick note on the mash tun going on the fritz (for the second weekend in a row!).

So here we go.

We did two batches this weekend, a 10 gallon Kolsch and a 6 gallon Imperial Stout that was a knock off of a Great Divide Yeti clone. First off, the tale of the tape:

Kolsch – 10 gallons

16.75lb Pilsner
2.75lb Wheat Malt
1.75lb Vienna
.25lb flaked barley

Target OG was 1.045
Actual OG was 1.050

Yeast: 1000ml starter Kolsch Yeast (#2565)

Pre-boil gravity was 1.036

The Kolsh went really well, we hit our targets dead on and actually managed better than the efficiency I had made the recipe out for (normal was 59% and with the OG I think it was 68%). Since we did the two recipes in a single brew day, it was a lot of running around and a lot of on the fly scheduling of what to do when. We struck the Yeti clone with about 15min remaining on the mash of the kolsch.

Great Divide Yeti Clone – 6 gallons

16.25lb US Pale Malt
2lb Crystal 120L
1.75lb Black Patent
1.75lb Chocolate
1.60lb Roasted Barley
1.50lb Flaked Rye

Target OG was 1.088
Actual OG was 1.071

Yeast: 1/2 gallon starter of ESB and American Ale mix (there was a little Kolsh in the mix too)

Pre-boil gravity was ~1.050

Now things went a little crazy during the Yeti. The way that we worked this out was while the Kolsch was in the mash tun being sparged, we had the Yeti split up into two different coolers struck in water at 158f. The plan was to, when the kolsch was done sparging, dump the two coolers into the mashtun for mashout and sparge.

Everything went according to plan until we got the yeti grain into the mash tun. Once there, the mashtun developed a clog and would not drain any of the wort. So we did things the old fashioned way. We used a strainer and a jug to run through all the grains. We washed the grains once and were on our way (really it was a CRAZY mess that made brewing look like a monkey fucking a football, but I digress).

As you can see from the pictures below, we have a few boil overs, but we had two new brewers over so it’s worth it showing them the full Monty.

How are things now?

Well as you can see from my crappy first video on CNYBrew.com, both the Yeti (on the right) and the kolsh are plugging away.

Special thanks to Taylor and Cooter for coming and allowing us to have a belated “teach a friend to brewday“.

More to come this week including a post on the hops shortage.

Cheers!

**one quick note, we treated the stout with 2tbs of gypsum and 1/2tbs of baking soda. Now the bad news is that we were not able to observe any of the potential efficiency benefits because our cluster-fuck of a brewing pretty much threw efficiency out the window. The good news is that we were homebrewing, not preforming brain surgery so it’s all going to be OK.

Anyway, even though I did not get all of the OG I should have out of the grains that I used, it still has a nice Strong flavor and has all of the characteristics of a good stout. Something I might recommend changing is the hops. There is a stiff hops smell that seems little out of place in a stout. I have always associated stouts with that nice malt flavor and smell (which this has plenty of).

Either way, as you can see from the picture, the head is a nice gold color that does not stay very long, but it’s there. The recipe is good and I would that anyone interested in a full flavor stout would like this.

From what I could tell it had a great taste up front. Strong smoky malt flavor but it lacks a finish. The smell was nice, but I am not sure it was fitting of a stout. It has a strong hoppy smell from far away, but when you get your nose right up to it and take a good whiff it has that rich malt smell that you expect in a stout.

Overall I would say (again this is a preliminary assessment) it’s a so mediocre example of a stout. However, thats not a bad thing for two reasons; One it was my first shot at all grain, so anything short of a disaster is cool with me and two my friends who are going to be drinking it are hardly what I would call “beer aficionados” though they do consume quite a bit of the bubbly.

My bad on the pics, I should not have drank the sample before I got the camera out.

Great Divide Yeti- Imperial Stout Clone
Base Grain- 15.25 lbs American 2 row malt
1 lb- Crystal Malt
12oz- Chocolate Malt
12oz- Black Patent Malt
10oz- Roasted Barley
8oz- Wheat Malt
8oz- Flaked Rye
1.1oz Chinook Hops (60min)
.55oz Chinook Hops (30min)
.45oz Chinook Hops (20min)
.5oz Chinook Hops (5min)

OG- 1.050
FG-1.005
ABV- 5.85%